Another day in Wisconsin’s north woods and it’s a good one. Made my way up to Florence County in search of Jennnings Falls which I somehow overlooked on previous trips. The sun is shining, temperatures are perfect, and the leaves here are turning some fantastic colors. Let’s hit the trail.
Access to the falls from the north is quite easy via DNR trails as part of the Pine-Popple Wild River Project. As it starts out the trail is wide and grass covered.
At the end of this old two track grass road, the trail turns and becomes more rustic, narrowing down smaller and smaller as you get closer to the Popple River.
Not far from the river the trail ends abruptly in a large pile of deadfallen trees, and the landscape starts dropping down to the water.
In the pile of branches is an old weather-beaten sign notifying this is the end of the maintained trail. From here it’s up to you to make your own route. Be aware there will be some bushwhacking and climbing across slippery and posisbly dangerous rocks.
Interestingly from the “end of trail” sign there is either a spring or a creek that cascades down the cliff and drains into the Popple River. I couldn’t find this on any maps but it is flowing consistently even this time of year – maybe this needs to be added on the master waterfall list? Debatable…
There are some small shelf-style drops and rapids above the main falls. Waters are impressively clear and the bottoms appear to be solid and rocky.
Looking upstream from closer to the falls you can get another angle of the small drops as the river bends around 90 degrees.
And just 50 yards away is Jennings Falls, a single chute-type drop with some very fast moving water. The Popple River narrows to about 1/3 the width creating a powerful increase in water velocity.
Downstream the river widens and waters are calmer, but I can spot a few rapids and what looks like a rock garden. Trees are looking nice but still not quite peak.
Long Exposure
Here’s a 4 second long exposure of the falls to get that dreamy effect. Time to hike back out and move on to the next location!
Video
Here’s a short video of my hike and the falls. That spring/stream cascade shows up better in motion. Watch until the end to see how close I got to the water!
Hiking Data
Here’s a map of the hiking route. I included some data on the private lands here to show how complicated it can be sometimes to know what’s legal. Notice my route veers off the marked trail on this particular map? Well, that old trail either doesn’t exist any longer, or it was re-routed to the new path to go around actual private lands. I can’t say for sure but I saw no other logical paths to take.
Total distance was just shy of 2 miles and about 130 feet elevation change. Not a very difficult hike other than the brush-busting and rock scrambling near the falls.
Hi Adam,
Funny you mention the small stream… if you read my write-up of the falls you will see I had problems with the “small stream”… I slipped on a wet root and fell into the “small stream”… no harm done, just embarrassing!
Yeah I saw that in the write-up, definitely have to be careful around those small smooth rocks, they are extremely slippery!